Part II: The Standards

Standards are baseline expectations. They are the lines in the sand that we decide we cannot cross. They are the parameters we set as the minimum we can accept. Standards can be exceeded, but we must never fail to meet them.

Your New CTO

Imagine that I am your new CTO. I’m going to tell you what I expect of you. You will read these expectations, and you will view them from two contradictory perspectives.

The first will be the perspective of your managers, executives, and users. And from their perspective these expectations will seem obvious and normal. No manager, executive, or user would ever expect less.

As a programmer, you may be more familiar with the second perspective. It is that of the programmers, architects, and technical leads. From their perspective, these expectations will seem extreme, impossible, even insane.

The difference in those two perspectives, the mismatch of those expectations, is the primary failing of the software industry, and it is one that we must urgently repair.